Violence and Religion

Surat, 2002

It was a sunny day, and the electricity was not there. My uncle and I were lying on doss out of our house after some time we both drifted off. We heard a roar all of a sudden my uncle took me into his arm and ran towards the room panting and shuddering instantly. I was astonished what happened to uncle. “What happened, Uncle?”, I asked with curiosity.

“Nothing son! You just don’t go outside, there’s riot between Hindu and Muslim people outside. Don’t you see the bared sword in their hands?”, he told me shuddering and hugged me tightly. But I hadn’t seen anything as I was 6 years old kid then and he wrapped me in his arm in such a way that I couldn’t see anything.

“But why are they wandering with bared sword, do they want to kill people?”, I asked with my eyes more opened. “Yes, they want to kill everyone who doesn’t belong to their religion.”, my uncle explained. “Religion? What is this uncle?”, I asked. “Nothing son, you just sleep we’ll talk later.”, he said patting my back but I didn’t. I held his hands and became adamant to my question,” please tell uncle…..tell…..tell please.”

“How should I explain to you son? They are Muslim by Religion those, who are rioting.” , he told holding my either shoulders by his both hands. “Aren’t they human?” , I asked being more curious. But my uncle didn’t reply.

But when I grew up, I came to know about that riot later. Why there’s always riot between Hindu and Muslim? Can’t we live in peace with each other?Why a Hindu hates Muslim and a Muslim hates Hindu? What’s the reason behind this?

All of these questions began to rise in my mind. I asked my elders about this but I didn’t feel content with their answers as every time I got the racial answers that they are of Islam Religion and we are holy Hindu. We are holy Hindu, and what about them? Aren’t they holy Muslim?

Mujaffar Nagar riot, September 2013

I was struggling with my engineering drawing in the first semester. After a lot of imagination of isometric view, I was bored and decided to read the newspaper for some time. Usually, my dad reads Navbharat times newspaper at morning. I took the paper and was about to just flip over the main page of the newspaper to read the third page, instantly I saw the main heading on the very first page – “Hindu- Muslim Danga jaree, ab tak 40 mare 60 ghayal”

Reading this I shuddered and didn’t read the whole news, put the paper aside and asked my dad,” Did you see the news ?”

“Yes, I saw. There’s no humanity now, son. We live in a country where our great personalities like Mahatma Gandhi, Mahatma Buddha, Mohammad Sahab, Lord Rama &Krishna born and conveyed the message of peace, love, humanity, humility and Harmony. But the sad part is that now there’s no existence of their teachings at all.”, my Dad replied being worried about the riot.

I took a long breath and recollected myself to read the news. After reading, Gujarat riot once again flashed in my mind and I began to contemplate about the crap mentality based on religion about our society.

I’ve seen the riots being induced just because of the beef case in UP. ‘Cow’ is considered as our mother in Hindu religion and Muslim assassinate them for their food. But who told us that only Muslim eats Beef or assassinate cows?

Let’s flip over the pages of History of British reign in 1894.Who provoked the violence between Hindu and Muslim? Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Cristian all were living in peace and were against the cow slaughter .

But beef was one of the favorite food for British citizens and after observing the agitation of Indian against beef case, Queen Victoria wrote a letter to than British ruler to recruit Muslim people in all slaughter houses of India. And they conveyed a wrong message to Hindu that Muslim people slaughter the cow and eat the beef. With this idea of ‘Divide and Rule’ they succeeded to bring the first riot among Hindu and Muslim based on beef case.

I asked one of my elders ,” Why there is so much gap between Hindu and Muslim ? ”

“Don’t you observe the terrorists? Did you ever get any Hindu terrorist ? They all are Muslim. ” he replied being firm in his voice. “I agree with your words but they are not Islam by their religion , they are only terrorists by their religion.

If they had read the holy Quran, they would have never gone to kill the innocent people. No holy scriptures teach to kill the people to attain salvation or anything else.” I tried to convince him but by default no one cares of my words about my this opinion .

Now the Question here arises, What is the definition of religion ? The definition of religion is to alleviate the pain , not to hurt the people. Today’s need is to transform the sentiment and feelings for humanity, not to transform the religion.

To the people, who hate based on religion, I would like to say to them – “Dharam hai bas insan banna, aur koi dharam imaan nahi.”